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Barbara Loots
Origen Productions’ latest offer TRIAL AND ERROR is a courtroom drama that co-opts the audience as the jury, and asks of them to make the ultimate ruling. It is onstage at the Baxter’s Masambe Theatre until 14 September 2024.
Written and directed by Emma Amber, the intent of TRIAL AND ERROR is to create a situation that challenges your view of a certain tragic event and the party at the centre of the tragedy. The audience is called upon to consider the impact of racial and mental health biases in deciding the fate of the 19 year old Amari Davis, who is charged with manslaughter and neglect on two counts following a car accident that claimed the lives of Simon's parents.
At the outset it appears to be a poignant story that aims to give the audience enough facts to decide for themselves whether they symphathise with young Amari Davis and want to save her from the bad hand fate dealt her, or whether they wish her to pay for the fact that two people are dead regardless of circumstance.
The premise seems clear… until you start scratching a bit at the surface, asking questions that were not necessarily fully unpacked in the professed balanced telling of the facts. As the play progresses, you soon realise certain characters are deliberately packaged as villains, more so than others, even if only in the slightest of ways.
The big revelation then is actually that the jury gets to decide, but rather that their decision stands to be manipulated. That in itself is a type of social experiment, but not necessarily the one that you may think you are partaking in as a supposedly “objective” observer when you take your theatre seat.
Amber has indicated that her choice to refer to the American Justice System setting was deliberate as she wanted to use a jury setting. That could arguably also be done by delving into other, more relatable and recognisable, common wealth country legal settings, which would bring the experiment a bit closer to home, while also moving the play away from the trope traps that come with the legalese one picks up in American legal television shows. But, one must respect the choice of the writer, and measure the success of a play within their chosen setting.
With that in mind, I found the play to have good pacing. The actors also gave it their all in terms of their character portrayals. The play being set in Georgia, specifically, presented a bit of an obstacle for some of them, with accents reflecting a more general version of American, rather than feeling all together at home in Georgia.
In terms of design, some more consideration can be given to the actual tools associated with lawyering: Props such as a yellow legal pad (not too expensive and easy to find) would go a long way in helping with the setting, rather than the employed 80s briefcase (with a tiny notebook inside) which reads more business man than lawyer. In fact, I would caution anyone against using the services of any lawyer who does not have ample paper to write an abundance of notes on… that tiny notebook just will not suffice.
Coming back to the story at the centre of the play: Initially I was all on board, thinking the play gives off a feeling of “Law & Order” meets true crime documentary, but it was not long before those rose-tinted glasses fell off and I started feeling somewhat manipulated to vote a certain way.
The jury objectivity was compromised the moment that Amari’s tragic childhood was held up against Simon’s struggles to fit in with the ways of his all too American-pie privileged, now deceased, parents. The opposing tellings both gave a degree of context for the “jury” to help personalise the two characters at the centre of it all, yet one was given a more layered backstory than the other. Simon’s interaction with Amari following the tragic accident felt similarly constructed to generate sympathy more so for Amari than for Simon.
I found this imbalance to be further reflected in the way the trial lawyers were presented too: The prosecutor was shown as smug, chasing a win regardless of the prejudices at play, while the defence lawyer was cookie cutter sweet in comparison and trying very hard to stand up to systemic injustice no matter the odds. So portrayed, any audience would naturally lean more towards the defence’s point of view.
Right before the “jury” is called upon to hand up their verdict, Simon is also shown to be in telephonic discussion with an assumed jury member, leaving the audience with the impression of jury tampering right before their vote. Any betting person could see which way the vote would go after that.
Considering all that, I think the outcome of the play is rather more deliberate than the creative team professes it to be.
That the narrative is intentional and so performed is not disputed: Everyone involved in the staging of TRIAL AND ERROR are committed to bringing the audience a value for money show and definitely putting their best foot forward in doing so. They also succeed in pushing the point of issues surrounding the undoubtedly flawed American Justice System. In that system, the reality of a jury trial is exactly one where the game is played through manipulation of perspectives depending on which side of the fence the lawyer is sitting.
So perhaps me feeling manipulated was exactly the point of it all? Perhaps the play in itself is an exercise in jury “tampering”? The “you decide on your own” objective sell is perhaps just a ploy to trick the audience into a false sense of security. If so, we’ll played!
If you don’t mind such trickery in the telling of Amari’s day in court, and you feel up to the challenge of questioning every character and event regardless of the way these are pre-packaged and presented, then TRIAL AND ERROR may prove a fun night out at the theatre for you.
TRIAL AND ERROR, an immersive experience exploring the shortcomings of the American Justice System, is onstage at the Baxter Theatre’s Masambe until 14 September 2024, with tickets available online through Webtickets.
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